SLTV StarSeries Season IX's duration of group stages, which are played online, will be prolonged, with LAN finals being moved to May 2nd to 4th as the ramifications of this change.

The organisators have just published a list of changes related to the ninth season of their CS:GO tournament, which is about to be inaugurated.

StarLadder has opted for an extension of duration of the online groupstages, now taking place during 25th of February until 20th of April, in order to minimize issues with delays as well as to ensure the teams are not troubled with any handicaps. The newly assembled schedule, which will be beneficial to both viewers and teams, is said to be released in a matter of days on SLTV's official CS:GO site.

With the LAN finals having been moved to May 2nd-4th, the interference between SLTV StarSeries Season IX finals and Copenhagen Games has been removed, as StarLadder Season IX LAN finals were initially set to take place during April 10th-13th, while Copenhagen Games are scheduled for April 16th-20th.

SLTV StarSeries Season IX Finals moved to May 2nd-4th

The StarLadder team has also enlisted a decision they had taken  to remove de_cache, a map which has been recently reintroduced into Operation Phoenix thanks to its popularity, with the aim to avoid issues during the map banning phase of a match. The map pool now only consists of 5 maps.

Along with the map pool changes, a revision of the tournament's rules has been made with most notable alterations in penalties for delays and player transfers, now sterner than ever.

You can read the updated list of rules by clicking here.